Fresh Eyes, Small Touch and Yogi the Bear

Early this year my wife and I planned a weeklong vacation to our Nation's first National Park, Yellowstone N.P. or Jellystone as I like to call it.  Yellow Stone is one of those places I remember as a child, and it was a magical place to me.  I can remember seeing the old geyser rip warm sulfuric water from her mouth in awe inspiring majesty. 

I wanted my children to experience the park in all her majestic ways, just as I once did. To see Jellystone and Yogi the Bear, maybe even talk with Ranger Smith. Oh the look of their faces while walking through West Thumb Geyser Basin.  The tall and ever flowing Upper Fall of Yellowstone.  Watch them stroll through the historic Fort Yellowstone, and the great bubbling hot springs in the Mammoth territory of Montana.

There are so many things my little children could experience in that short week; things and places that would leave an everlasting mark on their minds and souls.  We did not want them to just drive around the park, hop out, look slighting beyond their electronic video games they might play at their mother's home.  We wanted them to touch the park, walk in Her and know what the world is really made of. 

Throughout the week Abbie and Sam hiked an average of five miles a day.  They looked into the face of elk, moose and bison.  Not that close of course.  Sam got Altitude sickness for about 24 hours.  I was bit by a spider and vomited uncontrollably, nearly ruining our trip.  We hiked down to Shoshone Lake, stayed overnight and had a Grizzly look into our tent while her cubs sniffed our packs.  We tied the food up into a tree nowhere near our site.  

While camping we met seven really great guys.  They were camping after having spent a couple of days in Jackson Hole while there friend got married.  One of them sang songs, told stories and made my children laugh.  It also turned out he is a professional voice actor; the guy who does the Outback steak House commercial and a Coca-Cola spot too.  Another was a biologist and scientist working on discovering ways to help the human heart.  Another one named Noah, is a teacher in Queens, NY. 

Each one of us there in the park, our own reasons, lives, dreams, and individual reality. 

Each one enjoying the park in our own unique way, taking in the experience of LIFE itself. 

In the end, I realized a little more of why I enjoyed having my children there.  I discovered a little more of why the outdoors holds such a deep passion in my life.  Beyond the peace of nature and all of Her glory, beyond the sense of fulfillment, beyond the self acknowledgement of making the hike.  In the "Park", is a little of Little Kenny, the boy before the life.  The innocence before my father kidnapped me as a child, and during a time when fairy tales were real. 

So for each of us, just like my children, Yellowstone held wonder this summer.